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Editor’s note: This post is part of our ongoing developer series, created to help you learn more about how developers using Facebook APIs can help agencies and marketers scale their Facebook presence. You can find a full list of API developers on the Facebook Studio Page. Also check out the Preferred Developer Consultants directory to find PDCs who specialize in building applications and integrations that create custom social experiences on brand websites and Facebook Pages.
GraphEffect is a Facebook advertising platform that offers a range of proprietary services, including advertising optimization, customized reporting and “lookalike modeling.” We sat down with co-founder and CEO James Borow to talk about how GraphEffect can help agencies and marketers reach the right people by focusing on engagement.
What is GraphEffect’s approach to marketing on Facebook?
At a very high level, GraphEffect is a marketing platform built on top of the Facebook Ads API. It’s designed to help agencies and marketers identify target audiences and drive engagement with their products or brands. The idea behind it is that Facebook is about people, and if we can help them identify the types of people that they want to bring into their community, it will make the ability to engage these people much easier. At the end of the day, we’re focused on getting your message in front of the right people, and then helping you find more of those people.
How can you help agencies that are already experienced with building a presence on Facebook?
We help our clients determine what audience segments to advertise to next. By finding ways to continually engage the type of people who care about your message, we help clients scale their campaigns.
You recently launched a service called “lookalike modeling”—what do you mean by that?
You can think of lookalike modeling as a targeting recommendation engine for Facebook advertising—it allows us to continually put ads in front of the right groups of users. For example, if you know that people who like a certain publication tend to convert well, you also know that there are a lot of other people out there who probably like the publication but have not added it to their Facebook profile.
By analyzing our previous results that we've seen from campaign targeting, we're able to make an educated guess about how to target people who have similar interests. Facebook is a platform that is built on people and if you can find people in aggregate who act in a similar way, it can become very effective for scaling your campaigns.
As a result, a lot of clients are using us not only for media optimization, but as also for customer research. Because the system is finding targeting strategies that aren’t completely obvious, lookalike modeling becomes a tool for discovering more people who may engage with your content. We have had some clients who have altered their contact strategy based on the results.
How does GraphEffect typically work with agencies?
Most campaigns are very collaborative. The lead agency will come with a vision, and we provide insight into how to make it fit the Facebook platform better. We help to amplify the message out to a wider audience: When you build up communities of millions of fans who actually care about what it is you're doing, it creates a phenomenal distribution channel for the content you’re creating. In many cases, we see significant organic growth in new fans and in engagement from friends of fans, even when we’re focused exclusively on engaging a brand’s current fan base. We’re really focused on scaling that word-of-mouth activity.
Do you have any advice for agencies interested in working with GraphEffect? What is the process like?
We like to be involved as early in the process as possible. First, we like to sit down and establish the overarching goals of the campaign. If possible, it’s great to get everyone in a room, including the client’s Facebook rep so we can make sure everyone is on the same page. Depending on the campaign objectives, Premium inventory (which we don’t have access to via the Ads API) may be a better solution than Marketplace inventory. We make a recommendation after we understand the long-term goals.
We also want to make sure everyone involved in the campaign understands that Facebook is a different type of inventory. The “stories economy” is something we really believe in. Marketing on Facebook is not purely transaction-based—it’s about building connections and then having a plan for how to leverage them after you acquire them.
We also make recommendations about how to allocate resources. For example, we may say based on your goals, put 40 percent towards helping you build up fans, and dedicate the other 60 percent towards engaging this fan base and learning from there. It’s about getting to the point where we're using Facebook with a multi-pronged approach: The first step is to build the fan base; the second is to figure out the best way to leverage it and keep fans engaged.
What makes Facebook different from other channels? Why did you choose to build your business on the platform?
I look at Facebook as actually more in line with television than display or search. I think there's opportunity to do bigger, bolder, and more effective things than we've seen with other channels. There's also nowhere else that marketers can get a message in front of someone who wants their message based on things they like. I think that that in itself is incredibly rare and helpful for advertisers.
Any tips or best practices you can share with the Facebook Studio audience?
We’ve seen a lot of success with Sponsored Stories in particular—they are a huge resource for almost all of our clients. I would encourage readers to explore the different types of Sponsored Stories. Another tip is to look at the platform holistically and think about how you can leverage things like Open Graph integrations and apps with your media buys.
The whole concept of build, engage, amplify makes a lot of sense. Marketing on Facebook is really about having a conversation. If you can wrap your head around the fact that this is not search and it's not traditional display, but it's really a communication platform, then that’s when you really see the opportunity.
James Borow co-founder and CEO of GraphEffect.
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