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Finding the Facebook formula that works

Popimedia has become the first SA company to get the thumbs up from Facebook as a 'Preferred Marketing Developer'.

Kathryn McConnachie
By Kathryn McConnachie, Digital Media Editor at ITWeb.
Johannesburg, 24 Oct 2012
Popimedia's campaign for the Peugeot 208 saw an average of 4 000 viewers per day on the Facebook live stream.
Popimedia's campaign for the Peugeot 208 saw an average of 4 000 viewers per day on the Facebook live stream.

Local digital marketing agency Popimedia recently became the first company in SA to be endorsed as a 'Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer' (PMD).

The PMD Badge is awarded to developers that have demonstrated value-added capabilities in one or more of the four qualification areas, namely: Pages, Ads, Apps and Insights. There are currently 317 PDMs in 35 countries worldwide.

Popimedia was established five years ago by three entrepreneurs, Ryan Silberman, Gil Sperling and Daniel Levy, all of whom had no media experience.

ITWeb sat down with COO and co-founder Ryan Silberman to discuss the local social media marketing landscape and what the PMD endorsement means for Popimedia:

ITWeb: So how did it all start? With no media background, how did you get to this point with Popimedia?

Silberman: I studied industrial engineering and always tried to start businesses throughout university. I met my business partner (Daniel Levy) through a mutual friend, and we developed a business called (believe it or not) iTunes Music SA - just before Apple actually launched iTunes. We still have it registered. The idea was to create a vending machine that could dispense compact discs that you could compile. I think it was a little before its time.

So we went our separate ways and I started working as a business consultant. We stayed in touch though and threw around a couple of ideas. One idea was to brand car rentals, which would subsidise the rental rate. So we started to pursue that together, approached the car hire companies and eventually signed with Tempest. That was probably about 2006.

Early 2007, we quit our jobs and sat with a phone directory and started calling companies. But we found it quite difficult to sell branding on cars because of the high production costs. If you wanted to brand 10 cars, before you even blinked it was like R100 000 without us even making a cent. So we really had to innovate to survive.

Popimedia COO Ryan Silberman says while Facebook might not be for every business, with the right experience and creativity, it can be a valuable tool.
Popimedia COO Ryan Silberman says while Facebook might not be for every business, with the right experience and creativity, it can be a valuable tool.

We came up with about eight different product lines to generate revenue off that Tempest Car Hire deal. We started putting rental GPS units into the airport kiosks and distributing magazines. Still to this day, Tempest has a magazine rack where clients can choose publications for free for promotional purposes. But towards the end of that year we were thinking to ourselves, where to from here? We were never going to make enough money.

This was at the time Facebook was just starting to take off in SA. What was quite funny was that my wife was actually on Facebook and when she showed it to me, I said I would never sign up. Ever. But there were probably about half a million local users and Facebook had just opened up to third-party developers.

It was when they opened up their API that I really started to see the possibilities. That night I didn't sleep and I came up with the idea for an app called Wage Rank. The idea would be to input your annual income and then rank it against your friends anonymously, and rank it against anyone in the country. You could filter the results based on different criteria. So I contacted a developer friend (Gil Sperling) to see if he could help put it together, and he agreed.

The next year, we had our first client, American Swiss, who came on-board as an advertiser. And then we also started to license out the technology to different agencies. So that's how we got here - in a very roundabout way.

ITWeb: How did this Facebook endorsement come about? Was there an application process?

Silberman: You have to apply and submit your body of work and demonstrate the quality that they expect. They are quite strict in terms of how they do it. It was a rigorous process that took about a year. The approval came through in May, but we've only just gone public with it. In the industry and among the clients that we work with we are known as the guys who 'just do'. We aren't good at talking about what we're up to!

ITWeb: So what does this endorsement mean for Popimedia?

Silberman: It means quite a few things for us. Number one is that it's a marketing tool. So PMDs get a badge that we can display in certain areas. There are different aspects of being accredited or qualified. At the moment we've got one, which is the pages badge. And we are being accredited for the rest [Apps, Insights and Ads].

It also means that we are listed on a global directory, so there is a link we have to display in any mention of us being a PMD. This links to a directory of all the companies in the world that have PMD status. We're the only company in SA, and we actually believe we're the only company in Africa with this accreditation.

I think it gives our clients trust in the fact that we have this badge from Facebook and our work is of a certain quality. In terms of our relationship with Facebook, we are also privy to, and have access to, the latest developments and innovations. We have their ear, so when it comes to the applications we develop and the questions we need answered, it's that much easier.

You can imagine with a billion users, people are bombarding Facebook with queries any which way they can. So they have to set up buffers. It's been a very difficult road to get to the level we're at now, where we engage with them almost on a daily basis.

ITWeb: While there has been a rapid uptake of Facebook among consumers in SA, businesses still seem to be apprehensive about the effectiveness of the platform as a marketing tool. A lot of questions were also raised earlier this year when General Motors (GM) pulled its advertising from Facebook (before doing a 180 and going back again). What are your thoughts on that?

Silberman: I'm not convinced that Facebook is for every business. But I think that if you have the experience and you can get creative, it can definitely assist. Funnily enough, when GM pulled its advertising from Facebook, we actually tried to contact them because we did a campaign for GM in SA where we actually sold 33 cars from a Facebook campaign and the return on investment was huge.

So I think if it's done correctly then you can definitely get a return. I think the challenge is because it's almost like something you have to be seen to be doing, so everyone just jumps in without necessarily having a proper strategy. It depends on your business and how the platform can be used to customise the experience for your customers. You've got to be creative.

ITWeb: What have been some of your most successful and innovative social media campaigns to date?

Silberman: Our latest one was for the Peugeot 208. We got local comedian Lucky du Plessis and we put him in a car for three weeks and live streamed it to Facebook.

The campaign was called 'Let your tweets drive'. So for example, we sent him to the Soweto Towers and people had to tweet whether he should bungee or swing. It was a really amazing campaign. On average we had about 4 000 viewers a day on the live stream over three weeks. In the last week, we had 'Lifts with Lucky' so you could even motivate why you wanted a lift and he would come fetch you.

We also did a campaign for the telecoms company Zain a couple of years ago and the target in those days was 5 000 Facebook fans in four months. We reached that in a week, and in four months we reached about 100 000. It went up to about 230 000 in total.

I think I could confidently say we've done the most campaigns on Facebook in SA. We've done hundreds and hundreds.

ITWeb: Has there been a rapid surge in adoption of social platforms like Facebook among local businesses? What patterns are you seeing?

Silberman: Well, we've grown from a company of seven to 40 employees in the last year. It's a global trend and we're very much on point. I think Facebook is also growing tremendously from a consumer perspective in SA. So brands are recognising that power.

It's quite a challenge though because from an industry perspective, just about everybody is providing social media services. The industry is so new that from a client perspective, it's very easy to spend a lot of money and not get results. And there have been clients that I have heard of that have been burned quite badly. For example, I know of a client that spent R1.5 million to get the number of fans it would cost R50 000 to get, at the most. So I think that's the challenging thing.

Also, now every radio and TV ad has a direct link to Facebook or Twitter. That's a good thing - we've been pushing for that for many years. But our strategy is that every touch-point you have with a consumer needs to lead to a community. That community could be on Facebook, LinkedIn, or even your e-mail database. But if you're spending money on a broadcast ad, drive your viewers somewhere so you can reach them in the next campaign.

ITWeb: There has been lots of talk around the difficulties in determining the value of Facebook campaigns, and measuring return on investment. Do you use any specific tools when it comes to helping your clients find that value?

Silberman: What we always do is define the expectations upfront with the client. Is it likes that they're after? Driving people into stores? Or is it generating a lead? Once you define that, it's easy to measure. I can tell you that if your budget is X, you will get X number of fans.

But I think the key take-out is that social media is a long-term strategy. If you're going to try do it to just make sales, you will fail very quickly. If you look at Starbucks, for example, they're probably on 30 million-plus users on Facebook. Now when they launch a new product, they just click a single button and they're communicating with 30 million people. That's a significant return on investment.

ITWeb: Being a digital marketing agency, have you found that certain platforms like Facebook are more effective than others? Are any platforms emerging as key focus areas for you?

Silberman: We have run campaigns across all digital platforms and most social media platforms, and we find that generally Facebook gets the best results and engagement with consumers. Having said that, what's very important lately is mobile so the apps that we create, we're making them accessible on mobile as well.

ITWeb: What are the key trends you're seeing locally, and do you have any key focus areas for the near future?

Silberman: In terms of trends, social media has done wonders for small business. If you are savvy enough, you can do the same as what a major brand with a lot of money can do, if not better. We will also see a lot more of that going forward. I think it applies to anything from designing a logo, to setting up a Web site, to marketing, to generating leads. There are these wonderful tools out there that can assist small business start-ups with something that would have cost hundreds of thousands to do in the past. So I think that will start to become more evident and widespread.

For us, we will continue to focus on being the best provider of social media solutions in the country. What we will start to do is to build advertising optimisation into our tools, so anyone who manages a community can book ads, optimise ads.

I think where SA has lagged in social media is that, if I ask a brand what their top priority is, they say 'I need to get my fans up'. That was the case overseas a year or two ago. Now going forward it's about converting those likes into actual sales. That excites me the most - where brands start to realise real value.

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