by Jonathan Joyner, former Lead Coordinator of the FUSE, Mpowerment Dallas TX.
The FUSE is a Project of Resource Center.
The FUSE is a Project of Resource Center.
Media buying is simply the
process of buying advertising. A smart media buy is one where you truly reach your audience.
Facebook ads are a
powerful tool with the potential to inform young men about
your Mpowerment Project. When a person sets up a Facebook profile, they
are asked to provide a lot of information: name, birthday, gender, relationship
status, high school, college and where they work. Users are also encouraged to
list items of interest; books, television programs, movies, music, fashion
brands, restaurants. Facebook knows way way WAY more about you than Google does
and Google, who only knows your location and search history, was already light
years ahead of a newspaper, TV, radio ad, or billboard.
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| Follow the adventures of FUSE on Facebook| Mpowerment Dallas TX |
Why does this matter? As
an advertiser (I know that word has a dirty connotation, but think of yourself
more as Jon Hamm from Mad Men or Neil Patrick Harris from the Smurfs movie than
Don Cheadle from House of Lies) you can take advantage of all this
data. It allows you to directly target potential participants. Thanks to Facebook Ads, it’s much easier to segment and reach your core audience.
Let's pretend that you're part of a community building and HIV prevention program targeting gay and bi men of color in 'Fabulous City' USA. You can customize your
ad so that it only appears to people’s who demographic information says that they identify as male, currently between the ages of 18 to 29, live within your city
or within a 20 mile radius, are interested in men, and are Black, Latino, or
Asian. Simple, no?
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| FUSE | Mpowerment Dallas TX |
That said, you can do even
better. With the exception of your M-group, not every event is intended to
be of interest to every participant. You want to run a variety of ads for the
same reason your project hosts a variety of events: you want to appeal to
different types of guys. Twinks, theater queens, bears, butch, gamers; gay men
come in as many flavors as there are fruits in tutti-frutti ice cream. If you have an
established group of volunteers, use them to create the look for each
ad. Ask individuals their interest and create different ads based on their
responses. Going niche is a double edge sword, you can really send out messages
that resonate with your target and will elicit a click, but if you go too
specific, then you risk going after a very small pool of people.
When creating your ads, the number of
your possible audience will be shown . During
your campaign, your ad response rate will let you know if you’re hitting your
target or if things need to be adjusted.
Evaluate as you go and don’t be afraid
to start over.
What about men who
don’t choose to identify as gay? Can you still reach them? Yup! How you say? Remember
when Facebook asked them to list their interests? You’d be surprised at
the number of men who don’t choose to identify as gay, but will like fan pages
such as Hornet, Falcon Entertainment (NSFW) Andrew Christian (NSFW), Flesh jack (NSFW) and Brent Everett (NSFW) --just to name a few.
Target your ads to include
friends of current fans. Nothing is a better endorsement for a fan page than
seeing your Facebook friends already like it. Just like compounding
interest, once you’ve established your base (maybe your first 1,000 fans), Fan
page likes begin to snowball. Nobody wants to feel left out. As Fuse’s Facebook numbers show, the bandwagon effect is a
powerful thing.
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| FUSE | Mpowerment Dallas TX |
While it can be tempting
to just buy Facebook fans rather than put the effort in, don’t. Just don’t. Why?
1) it’s dishonest and
2) think about it.
You have 100 new
“fans," but your posts aren't actually going out to 100 new people. Your
message isn’t even falling on deaf ears because the ears never existed to begin
with. Everybody wants to be popular, but it’s much more rewarding when you earn
those fans. Plus, you won’t be sweating bullets should the social network purge
the SPAM accounts and your fan number drastically falls.
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| FUSE | Mpowerment Dallas TX |
Now, here is where we take
it to the next level. Customize your media buy to run when you know you’re
target market is going to be online. You’ll save money and get a better
response rate. Facebook likes it when you just click the default runtime because
it’s money in their pocket. But is your demographic really up at 4AM on a
Tuesday? If not, then why are you paying to advertise then?
I also recommend periodically
taking a pause in your advertising and changing up your ads. After weeks
and weeks of seeing the same ad, if your desired audience hasn’t clicked, then they’ve seen it, it didn’t appeal to
them, and they’ve built up a resistance and are filtering the ad out like
background noise. New imagery and/or wording and/or a break from your ad can be
the difference that makes them click.
I’m not calling for the death of print media in favor of purely digital
advertising (diversity in a publicity campaign is important). Sometimes a
condom packet insert, social-media business card, or an event invitation is called for, especially when conducting Venue Based Outreach.
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The Mpowerment Project is a Project of the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS) at the University California San Francisco (UCSF).
Nice blog...Very useful information is providing by ur blog.Very clear and helpful for beginners.
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