1. Interview with Dennis Yu
After having some great experiences of working at some of
the most prestigious companies, Dennis Yu is presently
working with BlitzMetrics, a social media analytics company
as a Chief Technology Officer. Over the last 4 years,
Dennis has guided the development of an ad serving
platform that garners PPC, SEO, email, and Facebook
advertising, optimizing campaigns to online and offline
conversions via phone, lead generation, online ordering,
and coupon redemption.

2. Dennis has helped brands grow and measure their
Facebook presence and is an internationally recognized
lecturer in Facebook marketing, having been featured on
National Public Radio, TechCrunch, Fox News,
AllFacebook, CBS Evening News, and KTLA-TV. He
belongs to that influential lot which have said and done a
lot of social media marketing and all his strategies have
worked very well for the respective brands.

3. Dennis has helped companies such as Yahoo, American
Airlines, JC Penney, Equifax, March of Dimes, and other
enterprises maximize online leads and revenue. Lets get to
know this Facebook Marketing expert better;

4. Apoorva: Dennis, you have run a number of successful
Facebook campaigns in the past. How has Facebook
marketing changed from then to now?
Dennis: It's all about custom audiences, whether via
website remarketing or emails. The lookalikes you can
generate from these custom audiences, which include
lookalikes based on people who have converted is truly
remarkable. The shift has gone from fans to engagement to
real-world conversions that occur in other channels. Social
affects your SEO, email conversions, in-store traffic, and
every other type of marketing. Social marketers now need
to grow up. You can't be just an ads expert any longer. You
can get quite sophisticated with custom audiences
now: http://bit.ly/1i3qFBV

5. Apoorva: Are various brands still using the platform to
promote their products with the
same zeal and confidence?
Dennis: Ever more so, especially for direct marketers--
folks like e-commerce and B2B lead gen. We help
companies like Rosetta Stone, Marketo, and Infusionsoft
drive revenue, largely by getting their content amplified into
Facebook. We call it "amplification", not advertising, since
it's about getting reach for organic content.Social marketing
is now synonymous with marketing automation, since
social is a great mid-funnel engagement technique. In other
words, use social to collect email and then have your email
programs do most of the conversions.Here's how some
folks do it: http://bit.ly/1hCQzQD

6. Apoorva: Would you suggest small media businesses to
go ahead with Facebook marketing? What should they be
careful about?
Dennis: If you're a small business, make sure you have an
email list and steady flow of content before you do
Facebook marketing. If you don't have these items, you
won't have an existing base to generate social trust, nor will
you have enough content to engage and convert.Set real-
world ROI goals in this 3 step funnel of audience-
engagement-conversion: http://bit.ly/1i3qKW9

7. Apoorva: With the passage of time, Facebook has revamped its
design/ad platform a number of times. Has that been of any help from a
brand’s perspective?
Dennis: Each time Facebook makes a change, they thoroughly test it
to make sure brands and their fans are getting a better experience.
Case in point-- the single column newsfeed. Or consider how the ads
products have gone from 29 different ad units to just 9. While change
can be frustrating, the overall goal is simplification and tying to
business results. And these changes generate more business for firms
like us that drive social leads. The more powerful the platform gets, the
easier for us to show ROI. For those who complain about organic
newsfeed reach decreasing, it has always been low. Brands have to
invest to get strong reach, anyway, just like on Google or any other
channel.

8. Apoorva: Initially, all campaigns were focussed on generating likes,
later on it became engagement which was measured using PTA. Is that
still the case for your brands? If not, which metrics do brands and
SMBs should care about?
Dennis: Of course you want to still look at fans and PTAT. But there are
counterbalanced metrics of quality and quantity. For example, you
might have a lot of fans, but you can use engagement to assess fan
quality. You might a high PTAT, but is that traffic converting? Look at the
3 campaign funnels system we've mentioned earlier to troubleshoot
your engagement funnel.

9. Apoorva: Can you share campaigns where there was a
direct impact to bottom line vs feel good metrics?
Dennis: I'd recommend that you read alexhoug.com, which
has dozens of examples, mostly small businesses with
small budgets, that are driving leads with Facebook
marketing. Word of mouth is critical. So if you have a strong
product/service with good reviews, then it's much easier to
drive business results.There is something about vanity (or
"feel good") metrics that please executives and can affect
initial consumer perception. But beyond that, invest in
engagement and conversion by producing amazing, helpful
content that isn't overly sales-ish.

10. Apoorva: In lieu of facebook marketing and upcoming
mobile apps, don’t you think that the latter has better
marketing and advertising opportunities?
Dennis: Facebook on mobile is fantastic-- it's about half of
their traffic. But you don't need to build a mobile app to get
mobile traffic. Your page's newsfeed is already designed to
work on mobile. And your ads should work on mobile. If you
do mobile anything, just make sure your website is mobile-
friendly/responsive.

11. Apoorva: Is BlitzMetrics doing something in the mobile app
marketing field? If so, can you share some examples?
Dennis: We run mobile app install ads mostly and
sometimes we'll build apps.There are so many players
building apps that it's a commodity now.It's traffic and
conversions that count, anyway.

12. Apoorva: A lot of companies that use Facebook marketing
do not get it right even after a number of tries. What are the
most common pitfalls companies that plague these efforts?
Dennis: The most common mistakes are over-selling
instead of engaging, not having clear business goals, and
not integrating other marketing channels. Social is an
amplifier of the success of other marketing efforts. It
doesn't stand alone.

13. Apoorva: Any kind of advice that you would like to give to
SMBs that would help them in their endeavors?
Dennis: It takes time-- social success doesn't happen
overnight. It's like growing a garden, as opposed to buying
veggies at the store. You can go to facebook-studio.com for
wonderful tools that Facebook has created for all of us.
Here is a 10 module course that cover the advanced topics:
http://bit.ly/1lDb96o And we have a program for $3,000 that
we provide to small businesses, where we implement all of
this, too. The bottom line is that we have to be smart
marketers that understand how to combine content strategy
with re-marketing, search engine marketing, creative
copywriting, landing page optimization, video production,
and a wide range of skills. Keep learning!

14. Rajat Garg (CEO)
rajat@socialappshq.com
+91 995 808 3052
http://www.socialappshq.com