A big ques­tion for many brands is how they can be lever­ag­ing the pop­u­lar­i­ty of social media to engage con­sumers in the pur­chase fun­nel. A new study from Marin Soft­ware has indi­cat­ed that, espe­cial­ly dur­ing sea­son­al peri­ods, con­sumers are look­ing to social media to seek out deals and offers from brands. With the major­i­ty of brand bud­gets being focused on organ­ic search, are brands miss­ing out on a oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­duct sea­son­al cam­paigns on social media and Face­book?

Social media adver­tis­ing can often be a source of divi­sion for brand mar­keters. Unlike search adver­tis­ing, which has been test­ed, mea­sured, and proven itself as a chan­nel over many years, social media adver­tis­ing has suf­fered from wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed reports dis­cred­it­ing the val­ue of the chan­nel, cit­ing the extreme­ly low ROI and even going so far as to com­pare the busi­ness to a Ponzi scheme.

How­ev­er, that isn’t the whole sto­ry. As a chan­nel, Face­book adver­tis­ing is rel­a­tive­ly untest­ed, and increas­ing­ly the data is begin­ning to show that the audi­ence and engage­ment lev­els are there.

The Social Media Seasonal Boost

New research from Marin Soft­ware has shown that Face­book ads expe­ri­ence a greater sea­son­al uplift than paid adver­tis­ing on Google. Analy­sis of $6 bil­lion worth of clients’ adver­tis­ing spends dur­ing 2013’s third and fourth quar­ters, has revealed that Q3/Q4 Face­book adver­tis­ing expe­ri­ences a greater jump in clicks in com­par­i­son to Google (in con­trast to their respec­tive Jan­u­ary fig­ures).

To be clear, the research does­n’t sug­gest that Face­book ads are out­gross­ing Google’s, just that there is a greater ele­ment of sea­son­al­i­ty in paid Face­book adver­tis­ing.

July, tra­di­tion­al­ly a slow time of year for retail­ers, was the only month in which Google saw a big­ger jump than Face­book, with the August/September back to school peri­od, and all-impor­tant win­ter hol­i­day peri­od from Octo­ber through to Decem­ber, see­ing a greater per­cent­age point change on the social media net­work.

What Does It Mean For Advertisers?

Bri­an Lee, Research Ana­lyst at Marin Soft­ware, offered his insights as to why the plat­form expe­ri­enced such a sea­son­al boost.

“Face­book is a social plat­form, first and fore­most. Its user base oper­ates dif­fer­ent­ly from oth­er dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing chan­nels, such as search or dis­play,” Lee said. “As the sea­sons change, so do peo­ple’s activ­i­ties and con­ver­sa­tions on Face­book – per­haps even the amount of time they spend on the site. Con­se­quent­ly, it makes sense that Face­book ad per­for­mance would be affect­ed by sea­son­al­i­ty more so than search or dis­play,”

Ad clicks on Google and Bing tend to remain large­ly con­sis­tent through­out the year with a bump in the fourth quar­ter, he said. How­ev­er, Face­book expe­ri­ences some note­wor­thy shifts.

“There’s a sig­nif­i­cant drop in ad clicks in Feb­ru­ary fol­lowed by a recov­ery in May and anoth­er drop in the mid­dle of sum­mer.” he said. “Ad clicks in July are 25 points low­er than the base­line (Jan­u­ary) and then sud­den­ly in August ad clicks jump to 13 points above the base­line. That’s a 38 point swing in a mat­ter of weeks and like­ly due to users shift­ing their focus from sum­mer vaca­tion (both school-aged users and par­ents with school-aged chil­dren) to either head­ing back to school.”

While Face­book ad clicks con­tin­ue to climb as back-to-school gives way to the hol­i­day sea­son, Google and Bing did­n’t expe­ri­ence these shifts, he said. Ad clicks on both search engines did­n’t start spik­ing till the hol­i­day sea­son, sug­gest­ing that Face­book is indeed affect­ed by sea­son­al­i­ty more so than search.

“It is impor­tant to keep in mind search is a more mature medi­um. Adver­tis­ers have a sol­id decade and a half of expe­ri­ence tweak­ing cam­paigns to max­i­mize sea­son­al shifts,” Lee said. “Face­book is still a rel­a­tive­ly young adver­tis­ing chan­nel. The ad land­scape and inven­to­ry is com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent on Face­book than it was 2 to 3 years ago. Refin­ing ad cam­paigns to max­i­mize sea­son­al­i­ty is like­ly an untapped tac­tic when it comes to Face­book.”

How Can Brands Best Use Facebook Advertising?

We spoke to Kevin Spi­del, direc­tor of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency, Voice Media Group, who offered his advice on how brands can con­duct their Face­book adver­tis­ing.

Patrick Hong: What are your thoughts on why Face­book adver­tis­ing expe­ri­ences a greater sea­son­al uplift in clicks (par­tic­u­lar­ly in the August/July and win­ter hol­i­day peri­od) than paid adver­tis­ing on Google?

Patrick Hong: We have sea­son­al cam­paigns that revolve around tourism and home ser­vice. For HVAC we tend to shift tra­di­tion­al SEM mar­ket­ing in the sum­mer months to Face­book, because the CPCs go way down, and inven­to­ry is more avail­able on Face­book. For our tourist des­ti­na­tion clients, we also are very aggres­sive on Face­book dur­ing the win­ter months for mar­kets like Den­ver, Aspen, Lake Tahoe, etc. We tar­get feed­er cities from LA to NY to these venues in these ski/tourist des­ti­na­tions. We also tend to dip into Face­book a lot in Decem­ber when inven­to­ry and search­es for “gifts” and “hol­i­days” become very demand­ing on SEM.

Patrick Hong: Are brands max­i­miz­ing their oppor­tu­ni­ties on the chan­nel?

Spi­del: Brands, more than ever, are look­ing to paid media experts to dri­ve their reach as Face­book locks down organ­ic reach. Brands don’t want to waste mon­ey, but know they have to pay to play. So they want a pro­fes­sion­al to help. More and more brands are com­ing to agen­cies to bet­ter their Face­book game.

Patrick Hong: What’s the most com­mon mis­take that brands are mak­ing in the way they approach Face­book adver­tis­ing?

Spi­del: They approach tar­get­ing lit­er­al­ly. If you are a piz­za brand and you are tar­get­ing piz­za eaters, then you tend to spend too much and dri­ve a lot of clicks with lit­tle con­ver­sions. You need to think of the buy­er per­sona and build your cam­paigns around behav­iors, not lit­er­al intent.

Understanding Intent on Social Media

The say­ing that has been mak­ing the rounds in mar­ket­ing cir­cles is that “peo­ple go to Face­book to inter­act with their friends and to Google to find some­thing they need, and pos­si­bly to buy” and for this rea­son the chan­nel is fun­da­men­tal­ly less valu­able for brands. How­ev­er, Mar­in’s research sug­gests that it may be time to revis­it social media adver­tis­ing on Face­book, espe­cial­ly dur­ing sea­son­al peri­ods.

Stephen Croome, founder of social adver­tis­ing agency Firstconversion.com, sug­gests that in many cas­es brands may sim­ply have been approach­ing Face­book adver­tis­ing with the wrong approach from the out­set.

“There are two mis­takes I see over and over,” Croome said. “The first is putting up pic­tures of their prod­ucts rather than the sto­ry of the prod­uct and the sec­ond is not test­ing enough.”

A per­fect exam­ple of how a brand can express sto­ry rather than prod­uct, as well as lever­ag­ing the sea­son­al Face­book boost, was Coca-Cola’s ‘Sweater Gen­er­a­tor’ 2013 cam­paign. By com­bin­ing excit­ing brand con­tent with sea­son­al dri­ven engage­ment, they showed how Face­book, and indeed social media adver­tis­ing can tap into user intent and build brand aware­ness and equi­ty. Per­haps rather appro­pri­ate­ly, the con­tent formed part of Coca-Cola’s EnjoyEv­ery­thing cam­paign ini­tia­tive.

Per­haps brand mar­keters need to learn from Coca-Cola’s cross-chan­nel mar­ket­ing ambi­tion, and give sea­son­al adver­tis­ing on Face­book a sec­ond look.

This arti­cle first appeared on the Linkdex blog.

What’s your take?